How I Went back to School with Kids

It is wonderful and important to further your education, if that is what you want to do. Otherwise you may feel incomplete or like your kids somehow stood in the way. I feel our government can and should do a lot more to help student parents.

Here is what I did. I had to re-think traditional college...I started right after high school in 1989 when I was 17. I also had a 4-month old baby that I had a month before I graduated from high school. This baby turned 15 a month before I graduated from college. 15 years! That is how long I had been going to school off and on, trying to force traditional college into my life. I also had two more children along the way and got married. I found out about the University of Phoenix (UOP) in 2000, and enrolled in October of 2001. I marched in 2004 with just 9 credits to go, and officially finished early 2005.

The beauty of UOP is that they have degree programs you can complete online, or for folks like me who need more discipline/structure, offline programs where you only have one class, one night a week, for 5-week segments. You meet with a study group/learning team one day or night a week (you get to decide). It was a world of difference from traditional college programs of semesters or quarters with 4-6 classes at a time. I won't lie to you, academically I found it to be a lot more stressful because there were papers due every single week. Sometimes even the first class. I remember with regular college being able to let weeks go by without really doing anything but study. However with UOP by the time I got burnt out by a class it was over. The time just flies by.

If you do traditional college you can work, but you might have to just go to school part-time and work part-time. Only you really know what your stress level is and what you can handle. If you have one, talk in detail with your husband or partner about how they can support you in school and help with the kids and housework...like coming home after lunch from a study meeting and your kids haven't eaten since you made them breakfast is a sucky, sucky feeling. I've actually had this happen, and my husband said, well they didn't say they were hungry! Like he had no idea two little boys needed lunch.

Anyway. If you are the major childcare parent, you may have to go into basic detail with your husband about feeding, cleaning, safety (like if he takes them bike-riding, make them put on helmets), recreation, friends over, bedtime, etc. And keep in mind that dads do parent differently. He's not going to do things anywhere near like how you do them. But as long as they are fed and clean (relatively, ha ha) and safe that's ok.

Also, if you have friends who are also student mamas you can try doing book swaps and childcare swaps. Trading and sharing books helped me out a lot back in the day. College textbooks are so expensive. In regards to money I qualified for grants and loans. That enabled me to go back to college as we didn't make the kind of money to pay for college outright. You can get financial aid for any degree program from any accredited school. Check with the school you are interested in to find out all your financial aid options.

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I Had An Awesome Mother's Day

I had such a wonderful Mother's Day! I am truly blessed with my children. They are all kind and appreciative of my mothering efforts. I feel treasured and loved by them. My daughter is 19, my sons are 13 and 10. I wanted to take a nice Mother's Day pic of them together, they were cracking up ^_^



My husband's mother's day gift to me this year was to build me a very nice border for my garden!! He's also making me a bench and table. I am thrilled! this is such a thoughtful and wonderful present for me.
^_^

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This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

T-bop Musing the Compost

T-bop was helping me turn the compost the other day. He was fascinated by how much the pile has changed since last fall. We use the compost for the garden.

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This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

Teens & Cell Phones

My daughter is 19 and a freshman in college and has had a cell phone since she was 14 and a freshman in high school. I resisted the idea at first but gave in once she started high school because she was involved in a lot of activities and socializing. With the phone if she wants to stay a little late or make a change in plans it's no bother to call me. If I have a change in plans, like I'm running late or something I can call her or text her. My oldest son is 13 and has a cell phone now for the same reasons.

It has really made things easier all around to be instantly accessible and has helped me to be more flexible and understanding with my kids, instead of being overbearing and dogmatic and frantic about where they were going and stuff. In particular with my teenage son. He has been requesting more freedom to go places on his own or with his friends. I feel a little better allowing him the freedom a young man needs now that he has a phone. Before I was very nervous about that and tried to keep him close to me at home.

It's also a useful discipline tool, because we made it clear to the kids that we would take phones away for poor behavior and/or a drop in grades. It has helped them to learn about budgeting, because we have a family plan with a set amount of minutes and texts. If they go over that, it comes out of their allowance. We had one very large bill once because my son didn't quite grasp that downloads of special phone add-ons could quickly add up. We had to block downloading for his phone and take the money for the bill out of his allowance. He definitely learned his lesson.

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Ibop is Now Nineteen!

19 years ago today this time I was a 17-year-old senior in high school, sitting in class. Pregnant, due to deliver May 26th. She was born today!

Against all odds,this baby everyone fated would ruin my life(and I'd ruin hers) is a high school graduate, college student, model, and superstar.

There are no words to describe how I feel about my daughter. She is a most wonderful person. She is a wise, compassionate, kind person.

My daughter is very talented in art and music. She is majoring in fashion design and plays bass in a punk rock band. She also plays violin.

When she was small, about 5ish, she would read my stories and say Mom, you have such a way with words. She has always encouraged my writing.

Even now I have no idea where I got the determination, the knot of resistance, to have and keep her. Everyone wanted me to abort or give away.

Our life together has been a journey. Her first 3 years were turbulent as I dealt w/her abusive father. Then for 2 years it was just she & I.

I've spent the past 16 years trying to make up for her first 3 years. No child should ever see their mother willfully staying in abuse...

But my daughter has always felt I was not to blame, she's always been compassionate toward the child mother I was.

My daughter told me the other day Mom I've watched you grow up. I am so proud of you. *cries*

I sometimes feel my daughter was sent to save me, because without her presence & influence I'd have gone wild, probably became a drug addict. Or something else tragic. It's because of her I fought to become the good inside me.

But overall I realize my daughter is here for her own self. Her life is her own. Her gifts, her talents, are meant for the world.

She is so beautiful, inside and out. She is a remarkable person.

Originally posted to my twitter. Follow me for periodic motherhood tweets throughout the day.

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This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

Boys, Men, Babysitting, and the Future

I have a knee-jerk response to the idea of male teenage babysitters as well as a distrust and fear of grown men being child-care providers.

When I thought about why I felt a male teenage babysitter was 'wrong', my initial concern wasn't that they would sexually abuse my children, because in my experience most teenage boys are not sexually attracted to children. Most teenage boys are not pedophiles and the ones that are usually were molested as children. No, my concern was that they would be violent with my children or not understand age-appropriate behavior or limits. For example, letting them watch a violent movie or allowing my sons to skateboard off the porch or letting them stay up too late. Or if I had a baby or toddler, getting frustrated or upset when they cried and shaking them or hitting them. Stuff like that. I feel/felt that a teenage girl babysitter of the same age would know better and do better; would comprehend better when I explained what to do and not do.

Why do I think this? Partly because in general, girls mature emotionally and mentally faster than boys, with a lag of three years or so. So a 17 year old boy is, mentally, like a 14 year old girl. Partly because boys and men are, generally speaking, more aggressive and different in other ways than girls and women.

It's also partly because of how sexism impacts the psyche of boys and men, how it often makes them view themselves. I read with interest some things about how men are more sexual and violent and stuff. One thing I have noticed about men that I feel compelled to bring up is how they often seem to feel the same way about themselves in regards to sex and violence.

Men often say or act as if they believe they are barely in control of themselves in regards to sex and violence, and that if they are 'provoked' in these areas it is the victim's faults. Don't believe me? Think about the typical male response when a woman is raped. The first thing most men want to know is where was she at, what was she wearing, and what time of day was it. Oh yeah and how old she was. Your average man will probably feel sympathy and horror about the rape of a 75 year old grandmother who was raped in the middle of the day in her own home, but what about at the rape of a 21 year old scantily-dressed college student who got raped at one in the morning when leaving a bar? A lot of guys, far too many men, would think...she deserved it and she provoked it. Remember when Mike Tyson raped that young woman, how many people, especially men, were like Well what was she doing in his hotel room at night? As if Tyson was perfectly reasonable for losing control under those circumstances.

It's the same with non-sex violence, men often say or behave as if they are barely holding in their rage or as if under certain circumstances it's ok for them to be violent with other people. Most bar fights, road rage, etc. are committed by men, for example.

So the way I feel men perceive themselves has a lot to do with how I interact with men and how I allow men to interact with my children. It seems to me that they feel they have little self-control when it comes to sex and violence; that they feel this is because they are male.

I am doing my best to do my part in raising boys who will not be predatory teens and predatory grown men. I must say, however, that I am not raising my sons in a bubble...they have been shaped and affected by living in this world as much as any other boy. They have been inundated and bombarded by all the messages, good and bad, of what it means to be male in this culture. I sometimes feel as if I were a little ant whispering in their ear against the backdrop of the roar of the ocean...do they even hear me? Is my influence enough? What can we mothers of sons do?

This blog post was written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

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